The present invention relates generally to the field of systems management, and more particularly to detecting and/or diagnosing problems in complex data processing systems.
Systems management is known. Generally speaking, systems management includes the administration and management of computer systems. Some examples of common systems management tasks include, but are not limited to: performance management, storage management, capacity monitoring, security management (including anti-virus and anti-malware management), hardware inventory, software inventory, software installation, network utilization, and user activity monitoring.
Performance monitoring (also sometimes referred to as “performance management”) is a known system management task that generally involves monitoring systems to help predict, detect, and/or diagnose problems. One way by which performance monitoring sub-systems monitor systems is by observing various system metrics over a period of time (where the data points for these metrics over time are commonly referred to as “time series data”).